The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon eBook

Somehow I always thought you’d get done in,
Because you were so desperate keen to
live:
You were all out to try and save your skin,
Well knowing how much the world had got
to give.
You joked at shells and talked the usual “shop,”
Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:
With “Jesus Christ! when will it stop?
Three years.... It’s hell unless
we break their line.”

So when they told me you’d been left for dead
I wouldn’t believe them, feeling
it must be true.
Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said
“Wounded and missing”—­(That’s
the thing to do
When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,
With nothing but blank sky and wounds
that ache,
Moaning for water till they know
It’s night, and then it’s
not worth while to wake!)

* * * *
*

Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,
And tell Him that our Politicians swear
They won’t give in till Prussian Rule’s
been trod
Under the Heel of England.... Are
you there?...

Yes ... and the War won’t end for at least two
years;
But we’ve got stacks of men ... I’m
blind with tears,
Staring into the dark. Cheero!
I wish they’d killed you in a decent show.

SICK LEAVE

When I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,—­
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
“Why are you here with all your watches ended?
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line.”
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
“When are you going out to them again?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood?”

BANISHMENT

I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of
light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—­
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.

The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

AUTUMN

October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.